Egbert Meissenburg, Seevetal, 1998:
THE STATE OF CHESS RESEARCH

The Problem

Arabic Chess is well documented in the thesis of Reinhard Wieber "Das Schachspiel in der arabischen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zur zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts" (University of Bonn 1972 and published by a commercial publisher in Germany in 1972). Unfortunately it is not possible to make the same statement for chess in India. It seems: No systematical chess historical research has been done up to the early nineties to find out and examine the (early) literary sources of the game in Sanskrit literature; the Indian archaeological finds in connection with chess and board games played in the Indian subcontinent are not (yet!) well documented. This deficiency is not (!) a matter of the nonexistence of such material but in my opinion - only? - a matter of not (yet) discovering it. The indologists who treated the subject, most of them from the European continent, were no chess historians, while the chess historians who wrote on early chess in India, most of them from Europe too, were no indologists. The chess historians disputed and argued on (such ...idle! ...) matters as the priority of the two-handed or four-handed game (or vice versa), and whether chess had been invented or had gone through a period of evolution.

The question arises: What could, what can be done to promote adequate research?

First of all we need no more speculation but proof and evidence from literary, archaeological and other sources. In which way can we collect and systematize the facts and the sources? But: We have not only to collect facts but also opinions to check them against the facts already known to us.

We have to complain that most of the papers on early chess written in German are not accessible to researchers from the English speaking countries from the point of not adequate mastering the German language.

And we have to discuss the famous statement of Daniel Willard Fiske of 1900/1905 from the findings of the German writing chess historians Antonius van der Linde (1874, 1881) and Thassilo von Heydebrand und von der Lasa (1897) that the existence of chess is not demonstrable by a single shred of contemporary or trustworthy documentary evidence before the 7th century. Down to that date is all impenetrable darkness - this was the opinion of W. Fiske.

Five Questions

1) Who? 2) Where? 3) When? 4) How? 5) Why?

Five words and five questions - but what a long lasting opportunity to dispute on the subject...

I shall try to give here and now shortest answers to these five questions from my point of view as a report of the previous research.

Who?

In 1790, the Englishman Sir William Jones was of the opinion that the "invention" of chess was a matter of an ingenious but a single genius. Other researchers bring us their conviction that the game of chess as we know it had gone through an evolution. "Not by one person, not at a moment" (Averbach 1991).

Where?

In 1936, the chess historian H.J.R. Murray claims from three considerations, that the invention of chess took place round about in 570 in India.

But: Other countries lay the claim to be the homeland of chess on the basis of modern researchers:

China (especially Chinese researchers; Joseph Needham; Pavle Bidev in his later years [ 1971 - 1988])

Elam (Ferdinand Bork; F.C. Görschen)

Uruk (Gerhard Josten)

Iran (Nathaniel Bland; Ricardo Calvo)

Further question: In which part of India (valley of the Ganges?) has the game of chess been developped or invented?

When?

Murray´s date - about 570 AD - is far too late.

In 1962, the German indologist Paul Thieme developed his opinion that chess (as a game of two persons without dice) was known to India already in the second century BC, with arguments that are ingenious in the same way as the Sanskrit texts he analysed.

Joachim Petzold (1993) confirmed the opinion of the English orientalist Duncan Forbes that chess has had an evolution of 5.000 years, even if one takes in account the fact that the Lothal pieces were not (yet) chess pieces - according to Petzold they point however, by their differentiation, in the direction of chess.

The German librarian Hellmut Rosenfeld has published (1958; 1960) his hypothesis of the evolution of chaturanga, which had been invented as a game for rulers/kings for the purpose of learning strategic war skill from the world of political teaching books in the beginning of the first millenium BC, into a game of intellect for two persons without dice round about 550 AD.

F.C. Görschen (1980) stated that the inventor of the game realized chess during the reign of Kumaragupta (414-455 AD).

G. Ferlito and A. Sanvito (1990): 400 years before to 400 years post Christ.

But: 3.000 years before Christ to the middle of the fifth Century AD - who solves the riddle?

How and why?

Chess as a kind of strategic exercise for war with a transport of the members of the Indian army on the board ashtapada in accordance with the reality - this seems the most plausible idea (Meissenburg 1991).

Ricardo Calvo disagrees: protochess is a pure game of numbers - while one of the ideas of Pavle Bidev had been the hypothesis that chess has been invented in the holy town of Nasik from magic squares.

Hans Holländer (1994) renders impossible the derivation of chess from racing games; the combination of a hunting game and a strategic game seems more like to him.

Pavle Bidev (1963, 1965) and Joseph Needham (1962): the game of chess has been associated throughout its development with astronomical symbolism and techniques of divination (Bidev: from hsiang hsi as an oracle chess).

The main idea of chess already in early Indian chess is the unvulnerable king - was it the time that chess has been invented, when Alexander the Great conquered India?

Did the game of chess come from the religious sphere of Buddhism or Hinduism? Was protochess a game for two or four persons - with or without dice?

 

The proper way to a reliable solution

First of all we have to concentrate on literary sources (even those that come from the first centuries of the second millenium AD) and on archaeological finds ,then to the idea which has been incorporated in the game of chess, especially its war strategic characteristics, then to the etymological peculiarities and the nomenclature, the possibility that chess could have a mathematical or astronomical involvement and last that there could be a derivation from other board game(s) or games of chance.

The argumentum ex silentio (Willard Fiske, 1900/1905) from literary sources seems weaker than the proceeding points. If there is impenetrable darkness in connection with documentary evidence we have to discuss: 1. Why? - 2. Why should chess have an age of 5.000 years?

We carefully have to check the Chinese, the Middle-Persian (Pahlavic) and the Arabic sources against the material from India to come to an acceptable conclusion.